What did the Montanists read?(Critical Essay)
Harvard Theological Review, Oct, 2001, by Nicola Denzey
Could the Montanists have included any of the Nag Hammadi writings among the "infinite number" of writings that Hippolytus of Rome reports they considered authoritative? (1) Heresiological sources give us little information regarding what might have been included within a Montanist canon. We know from the Church Fathers that the New Prophecy possessed its own inspired writings. (2) Indeed, in the fourth century Eusebius charges them with having created "new scriptures" (3)--presumably the collections of oracular statements that Hippolytus claims circulated under the names of Montanus, Prisca and Maximilla, and about which the bishop of Rome complains that "they allege that they have learned more from these than from the law, and the prophets and the Gospels." (4) On the other hand, Eusebius's late contemporary, Epiphanius, makes it clear that members of the New Prophecy did not reject more traditional scriptures. (5) For their barbs against their theological opponents, they adopted Matthew's castigation of "prophet-slayers"; (6) they also certainly favored Paul, upon whom they appeared to have drawn to justify their stance on prophecy, and--certainly by the fourth century--the Gospel of John, for their notion that Montanus himself was the Paraclete or "Spirit of God." (7) Their use of the Book of Revelation has been widely debated, but seems likely. (8) But could the Montanists have read--and considered authoritative--any of the writings now preserved in the Nag Hammadi Library?
The present article considers the possibility that the New Prophecy may have found certain so-called "gnostic" writings from the Nag Hammadi Library compatible enough with their theology to have both known and included them within their canon. The Nag Hammadi Library is eclectic; it does not represent any single theology or community. Within this diverse collection, I suggest that two related texts--the revelatory poem entitled Thunder: Perfect Mind (NHC VI,2) and Trimorphic Protennoia (NHC XIII,1)-- although hardly likely to have been composed by Montanists, may nevertheless have been attractive to early adherents of the New Prophecy during the late second century. (9) These texts are notoriously difficult to categorize or date; the Thunder and Trimorphic Protennoia's use of Jewish sapiential traditions, however, suggests authorship within a Jewish Alexandrian community, with later redaction--most likely during the second century--by heterodox Christians. (10) There is nothing to connect either text directly with the New Prophecy or with Asia Minor, but this need not be necessary to suggest their use within Montanist communities, which likely began around Pepuza in the 160s C.E. but quickly spread westward; they reached North Africa within the century. (11)
Admittedly, the suggestion that adherents of the New Prophecy might have been attracted to Nag Hammadi documents initially strikes us as absurd. But let us consider for a moment what has prevented us from considering a Montanist reception of so-called Gnostic texts. First, the long, slow process of academic compartmentalization has prevented us from thinking across lines that were established for us, ironically enough, by the heresiological sources we now tend to deconstruct or to refute. If we allow ourselves to be influenced by the biases of these sources themselves, it is easy enough to perceive Montanists as having polemicized against "Gnosticism." Tertullian, for instance, himself a Montanist later in life, reports that the Montanist Proclus wrote against the Valentinians. (12) Tertullian himself composed a number of treatises, such as On the Soul, which we conventionally define as "anti-Gnostic." Yet the label is misleading. Tertullian argued not against "Gnostics," but against certain Christians who rejected voluntary martyrdom, who denied the resurrection of the flesh (as is the case with On the Soul), and who devalued the flesh. He did not refute movements per se, but rather theological opponents such as Marcion and Valentinus. As Michael Williams has recently argued, none of these movements, nor any single figure such as Marcion or Valentinus, necessarily or consistently represented a movement or philosophy we can safely label "Gnosticism," taken as a whole. (13) To return to our two "case studies," neither Thunder: Perfect Mind nor Trimorphic Protennoia expresses any sense of the flesh as devalued in any way, nor takes any position regarding martyrdom, nor denies the resurrection of the flesh. Their theology is neither Marcionite nor Valentinian. Yet the generalizing label "Gnostic," for the most part, remains. A lamentable consequence of this inaccurate categorization is that scholars remain confined to their area of specialization without working across categories; "Gnosticism" specialists do not generally examine or consider Montanist texts, nor do Montanism specialists read Nag Hammadi sources.
Scholars of early Christianity face a second significant challenge in that we are caught between two types of sources. Texts such as those found at Nag Hammadi provide few clues as to their social or community context; we cannot infer from them who was using them, or where, or when, or for what purpose. By way of contrast, heresiologists have specialized in anthropological excursus, delighting especially in the more specific, bizarre aspects of these groups. Hippolytus's derogatory characterization of the Montanists as "radish-eaters" ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), (14) for instance, could neither be refuted nor supported by examining their theological treatises. In other words, while many of the characteristics of Montanism that are supported in the heresiological sources--such as their relation to martyrdom, their position on marriage, their practices of feasting and fasting, prophecy/glossolalia, and the phenomena of women appointed to the clergy--are crucial to identity politics, they are absent from the theological treatises either produced, or adopted, and circulated by Montanist communities. Accordingly, none of our extant Montanist oracles takes much of a direct position on these issues, and we certainly cannot expect to find them in other theological texts they might have included within their canon.
On the other side of the equation, there are reasons I believe we ought to take seriously the possibility that Thunder and Trimorphic Protennoia develop and articulate various aspects of their theology--including conceptions of the divine, the nature of salvation, and the role of community--which members of the New Prophecy may not have found necessarily dissonant with their own. The dismantling of heresiological categories within modern scholarship has startled us into appreciating how remarkably close to the mainstream the theology and practices of any group labeled "heretical" can be. It is less remarkable to us now than ever before, for instance, that Tertullian in his Montanist phase uses the Pauline-inspired terms psychici and spiritales--once widely considered part of a characteristically "Gnostic" vocabulary--to distinguish his community from members of the mainstream on the position of second marriage. (15)
Several characteristics of classical Montanism reveal remarkable intersections with elements found in both Thunder: Perfect Mind and Trimorphic Protennoia. First, Montanists shared a distinct mode of discourse--the use of aretalogical "I am" sayings--with these two Nag Hammadi writings. Second, all of these sources share a similar orientation with respect to the status of prophecy and eschatology. In anticipation of the charge that these two elements--namely similar vocabulary and praxis--are merely general characteristics that diverse communities of the second century were likely to have shared, I offer a third, more specific parallel: Montanist sapiential theology--as expressed in the unattributed oracle where Christ, in the form of a woman, comes and places Wisdom inside a prophetess--bears a remarkable similarity to the descent and incarnation of Wisdom/Protennoia in the Trimorphic Protennoia. On the basis of these elements, I suggest that the New Prophecy appears to have shared with these two Nag Hammadi treatises an adaptation of Jewish sapiential traditions that placed at their center a particular way of envisioning divine power as feminized. I base my argument here not on heresiological definitions of the New Prophecy, but on a comparison of our earliest extant Montanist oracles with these two Nag Hammadi treatises. (16)
* Gnosticism and Montanism
In recent years, scholars have devoted considerable attention to the often complex relationships between names and communities, particularly to the difference between names as labels imposed by outsiders, on the one hand, and self-designations, on the other. (17) No known "Gnostic" group in antiquity ever identifies itself as such anywhere in our extant literature, just as Montanists themselves appear to have eschewed the label "Montanist" in favor of the early self-designation [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. Nevertheless, proponents of nineteenth-century historiography adopted both labels to articulate their vision of a second-century struggle of the Catholic Church against twin threats, "the Scylla of Gnosticism," on the one hand, and the "Charybdis of Montanism," on the other. (18) We can easily detect this "twinning" of anti-Catholic influences in, for instance, the work of Adolf Harnack, Ferdinand C. Baur, and Albrecht Ritschl. (19) Both movements, according to this view, developed as extravagant responses to primitive Christianity, nourished within the dangerously pagan wildness of Phrygia. Accordingly, Montanism as a reaction to Gnosticism developed as a tenet of nineteenth-century scholarship, represented in particular by Augustus Neander's work on Tertullian, Antignostikus, (20) and Hans von Schubert's Outline of Church History, where Montanism and the "Great Church" emerged as two different responses to the dangers of Gnosticism. (21)
Karlfried Froehlich, one of the few modern scholars to have examined critically the historiographical relationship between Montanism and Gnosticism, discusses Montanism as the "countermovement to Gnosticism" in an incisive but lamentably overlooked article published in 1973. (22) He notes the stolid conviction among modern scholars that Montanism had nothing to do with Gnosticism, but that it stood "on one side of the fence while Gnosticism stands on the other--in short, that [Montanism] must be anti-gnostic by nature and by root." (23) Christine Trevett, one of the most recent scholars to reexamine and define Montanism, likewise notes the tendency to separate the two movements:
Given such "twinning" in terms of influence, it is interesting that we
rarely encounter attempts to twin Montanism and Gnosticism genetically.
Instead, Montanism is usually assumed to have been at odds with, rather
than influenced by, Gnosticism. (24)
Trevett herself supports this analysis, describing Montanism as "hostile" to Gnostic thought. (25) Yet none of the references she makes in her learned study of Montanism indicates anything but a superficial and inaccurate knowledge of Gnosticism. She never defines Gnosticism per se, but she does associate it with both Docetism and Encratism, which I would argue were rather different and often separate philosophies or movements. In any case, neither is characteristic of Gnosticism nor of the two texts I am discussing here. (26) Like many other Montanist scholars before her, Trevett also falls prey to an argument ex silentio: "had the Prophecy been tainted [sic] with Gnosticism, then Hippolytus, no less than Tertullian, would certainly have recognized and written of it." (27) But this argument presumes accuracy in the process of heresiological labeling. To be fully consistent within her own logic, Trevett would be forced to accept Montanism as heretical, as did Hippolytus and his heresiologist contemporaries. Yet Trevett herself is quick to point out that the label was inaccurate, at least during the second century. (28)
Even with the spirit of the new academic Perestroika and scholars' concomitant willingness to do away with heresiological labels and constructs, few have seriously explored the idea that Montanism and Gnosticism might somehow have been related, rather than antithetical, phenomena. Froehlich suggests that the Montanist logia share more themes and language with Gnosticism than others have allowed, including at least one smoking gun: a Montanist claim to gnosis appears in an oracle attributed to Maximilla. (29) Froehlich's sole supporter, thus far, has been Francoise Blanchetiere, who, in a 1978 article characterized the New Prophecy as a spiritual reform movement with strongly apocalyptic and encratic leanings "non sans quelque parente avec certaines idees gnostiques." (30)
It is hardly my intention here to argue that Montanism was a form of Gnosticism; rather, I suggest that the labels for both are largely inadequate, heresiological constructs that do violence to both sets of evidence. They prevent us from seeing their points of contact, which I will argue are based not directly on textual interdependence or influence, but on a similar way of reinterpreting and rearticulating Jewish prophetic or sapiential traditions. Froehlich himself paved the way for this approach when he cautiously ventured that "a common language with Gnosticism suggests, if not interdependence, at least a common matrix," and then raised the tentative question, "Is there a possibility of Jewish roots for Montanism?" (31) Later scholars have been more likely to consider the Jewish matrix of both Montanism and Gnosticism, and to remain open to Judaism's profound influence on second-century Christian communities as they shaped new christocentric theologies from the ground of Jewish concepts of community, prophecy, and identity. We do not know the degree to which these new communities actively shaped one another. We do know, however, that they confronted similar issues of identity, heritage, and the need for change, and that they faced these challenges with relatively consistent and definable discourse, imagery, and purpose. These points of overlap will, I hope, become clearer below.
* Montanism and Aretalogies
Origen, in his description of Christian prophets active in the 170s, notes that prophetic discourse at the time was characterized by self-commendation formulae such as "I am God" and "I have come." (32) Recently, scholars have underscored the use of "I am" sayings as a characteristic form of Montanist prophetic discourse. (33) From Montanus himself we have three "I am" sayings, of which the most interesting for our purposes is "I am the Father and I am the Son and I am the Holy Spirit" ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). (34) Although the form of this oracle immediately suggests the Gospel of John as its inspiration, the use of the [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] formula characterizes neither Montanism nor the Fourth Gospel exclusively; we find it in a wide range of early Christian revelatory discourses, many of which Froehlich cites. (35) For instance, Simon Magus, like Montanus, apparently equated himself with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (36) In Trimorphic Protennoia, we also find the identification of the speaker as Father, Mother and Son at 37:22, though here it is embedded in a doctrinal passage and not an aretalogy. A better parallel for an aretalogical utterance in Trimorphic Protennoia is 45:3: "I am androgynous; I am Mother and I am Father." The well-noted shift in the second person of the Trinity need not concern us just yet; it is to the form of the proclamation that I wish to bring attention at this moment.